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Thursday, April 27, 2006
"The Adventures of 78 Charles Street" by Phillip Schultz
For thirty-two years Patricia Parmelee's yellow light
has burned all night
in her kitchen down the hall in 2E.
Patricia--I love to say her name--Par-me-lee!
knows where, across the street,
Hart Crane wrote "The Bridge,"
the attic Saul Bellow holed up in
furiously scribbling "The Adventures of Augie March,"
the rooftop Bing Crosby yodelled off,
dreaming of Broadway, the knotty,
epicene secrets of each born-again town house.
Indeed, we, Patrica and me, reminisce
about tiny Lizzie and Joe Pasquinnucci,
one deaf, the other near-blind,
waddling hand in hand down the hall,
up the stairs, in and out of doors,
remembering sweetening Sicilian peaches,
ever-blooming daylilies, a combined one hundred
and seventy years of fuming sentence fragments,
elastic stockings, living and outliving,
everyone on the south side of Charles Street.
How Millie Melterborne, a powerhouse
of contemptuous capillaries inflamed
with memories of rude awakenings,
wrapped herself in black chiffon
wher her knocked-up daughter Kate married a Mafia son
and screamed "Nixon, blow me!"
out her fifth-floor window,
then dropped dead face first
into her gin-spiked oatmeal.
How overnight Sharion in 4E
became a bell-rining Buddhist
explaining cat litter, America, pleurisy, multiple orgasms,
and why I couldn't love anyone who loved me.
And Arhcie McGee in 5W, one silver-cross earring,
a tidal wave of dyed black hair,
motorcycle boots jingling, Jesus boogying
on each enraged oiled bicep, screaming
four flights down at me for asking
the opera singer across the courtyard to pack it in,
"This is N.Y.C., shithead, where fat people sing while fucking!"
Archie, whom Millie attacked with the pliers
and Lizzie fell over, drunk on the stairs, angry
if you nodded or didn't, from whom, hearing his boots,
I hid shaking under the stairwell,
until I found him trembling outside my door,
"Scram, Zorro, I'll be peachy in the morning."
In a year three others were dead of AIDS,
everyone wearing black,
but in the West Village everyone did
every day anyway.
Patricia says, The Righteous Brothers and I
moved in Thanksgiving, 1977
and immediately began looking for
that ever-loving feeling, rejoicing
at being a citizen of the ever-clanging future,
all of us walking up Perry Street,
down West Tenth, around Bleecker,
along the Hudson, with dogs, girlfriends,
and hangovers, stoned and insanely sober,
arm in arm and solo, under the big skyline,
traffic whizzing by, through
indefatigable sunshine, snow, and rain,
listening to the Stones, Monk, Springsteen,and Beethoven,
one buoyant foot after the other, nodding hello
good morning happy birthday adieu adios auf wiedersehen!
before anyone went co-op, renovated,
thought about being sick or dying,
when we all had hair and writhed on the floor
because someone didn't love us anymore,
when nobody got up before noon, wore a suit,
or joined anything, before there was hygiene,
confetti, a salary, cholesterol,
a list of names to invite to a funeral...
Yes, the adventures of a street in a city of everlasting hubris,
and Patricia's yellow light
when I can't sleep and come to the kitchen
to watch its puny precious speck stretch
so quietly so full of reverence
into the enormous darkness,
and I, overcome with love for everything so quickly fading,
my head stuck out the window
breathing the intoxicating melody
of our shouldered-and-cemented little island,
here, now, in the tenement of this moment,
dear Patricia's light,
night after night,
burning with all the others,
on 78 Charles Street.
--Phillip Schultz
featured in The New Yorker, April 24, 2006
has burned all night
in her kitchen down the hall in 2E.
Patricia--I love to say her name--Par-me-lee!
knows where, across the street,
Hart Crane wrote "The Bridge,"
the attic Saul Bellow holed up in
furiously scribbling "The Adventures of Augie March,"
the rooftop Bing Crosby yodelled off,
dreaming of Broadway, the knotty,
epicene secrets of each born-again town house.
Indeed, we, Patrica and me, reminisce
about tiny Lizzie and Joe Pasquinnucci,
one deaf, the other near-blind,
waddling hand in hand down the hall,
up the stairs, in and out of doors,
remembering sweetening Sicilian peaches,
ever-blooming daylilies, a combined one hundred
and seventy years of fuming sentence fragments,
elastic stockings, living and outliving,
everyone on the south side of Charles Street.
How Millie Melterborne, a powerhouse
of contemptuous capillaries inflamed
with memories of rude awakenings,
wrapped herself in black chiffon
wher her knocked-up daughter Kate married a Mafia son
and screamed "Nixon, blow me!"
out her fifth-floor window,
then dropped dead face first
into her gin-spiked oatmeal.
How overnight Sharion in 4E
became a bell-rining Buddhist
explaining cat litter, America, pleurisy, multiple orgasms,
and why I couldn't love anyone who loved me.
And Arhcie McGee in 5W, one silver-cross earring,
a tidal wave of dyed black hair,
motorcycle boots jingling, Jesus boogying
on each enraged oiled bicep, screaming
four flights down at me for asking
the opera singer across the courtyard to pack it in,
"This is N.Y.C., shithead, where fat people sing while fucking!"
Archie, whom Millie attacked with the pliers
and Lizzie fell over, drunk on the stairs, angry
if you nodded or didn't, from whom, hearing his boots,
I hid shaking under the stairwell,
until I found him trembling outside my door,
"Scram, Zorro, I'll be peachy in the morning."
In a year three others were dead of AIDS,
everyone wearing black,
but in the West Village everyone did
every day anyway.
Patricia says, The Righteous Brothers and I
moved in Thanksgiving, 1977
and immediately began looking for
that ever-loving feeling, rejoicing
at being a citizen of the ever-clanging future,
all of us walking up Perry Street,
down West Tenth, around Bleecker,
along the Hudson, with dogs, girlfriends,
and hangovers, stoned and insanely sober,
arm in arm and solo, under the big skyline,
traffic whizzing by, through
indefatigable sunshine, snow, and rain,
listening to the Stones, Monk, Springsteen,and Beethoven,
one buoyant foot after the other, nodding hello
good morning happy birthday adieu adios auf wiedersehen!
before anyone went co-op, renovated,
thought about being sick or dying,
when we all had hair and writhed on the floor
because someone didn't love us anymore,
when nobody got up before noon, wore a suit,
or joined anything, before there was hygiene,
confetti, a salary, cholesterol,
a list of names to invite to a funeral...
Yes, the adventures of a street in a city of everlasting hubris,
and Patricia's yellow light
when I can't sleep and come to the kitchen
to watch its puny precious speck stretch
so quietly so full of reverence
into the enormous darkness,
and I, overcome with love for everything so quickly fading,
my head stuck out the window
breathing the intoxicating melody
of our shouldered-and-cemented little island,
here, now, in the tenement of this moment,
dear Patricia's light,
night after night,
burning with all the others,
on 78 Charles Street.
--Phillip Schultz
featured in The New Yorker, April 24, 2006
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